1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information access method which uses biometrics characteristics of a portion of a human body for individual authentication to permit accessing of information, and a system therefor, and in particular relates to an information access method and information processing system for the same in which, through an easy input operation, registered biometrics information is verified against detected biometrics information, to permit accessing of information.
2. Description of the Related Art
From the standpoint of protection of individual information, in recent years permission to access individual information and other information has posed problems. For this reason there have been demands for more sophisticated individual authentication technology, and biometrics authentication technology in particular has attracted attention. There are numerous portions of the human body which can differentiate the individual, such as fingerprints and toe-prints, the retinas of the eyes, facial features, and blood vessels, so biometrics authentication recognizes such portions of a human body to perform individual authentication.
For example, blood vessels of the palms, the back and fingers of the hands provide a comparatively large quantity of individual characteristic data, and blood vessel (vein) patterns in particular remain unchanged throughout life from infancy and are regarded as being completely unique, and so are well-suited to individual authentication. In authentication technology based on blood vessel images in the palm of the hand, the user brings his hand into proximity with an image capture device during registration and during authentication. The image capture device emits near-infrared rays, which are incident on the palm of the hand. The image capture device uses a sensor to receive near-infrared rays rebounding from the palm of the hand.
Hemoglobin in the red corpuscles flowing in the veins has lost oxygen. This hemoglobin (reduced hemoglobin) absorbs near-infrared rays at wavelengths near 760 nanometers. Consequently when near-infrared rays are made incident on the palm of a hand, reflection is reduced only in the areas in which there are veins, and the intensity of the reflected near-infrared rays can be used to identify the positions of veins.
In order to use such blood vessel images in individual authentication, the user first uses an image capture device to register vein image data of the palm of his own hand in a server database. Then, in order to perform individual authentication, the user employs an image capture device to cause the vein image data of his own hand to be read. The registered vein image retrieved from the database using the ID of the user is verified against the vein pattern of the vein image for verification thus read, and based on the degree of similarity, the individual is authenticated (see Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-293643).
Individual information access methods employing such biometrics authentication are widely used in medical systems, financial systems, and similar (see Japanese republished Patent 2002-062222).
In system which uses such biometrics authentication to permit information access, an individual's ID number must be input to extract registered biometrics information. From the standpoint of the user, the system would be more convenient if the individual could be identified solely through biometrics authentication, without requiring input of an ID number. This is called N:1 authentication. The larger the number of registrations N of biometrics authentication data, the more time is required for searching, making such a method unsuitable for a large-scale system.
Hence in the prior art, when performing biometrics authentication, biometrics data linked with a unique ID number is expanded into memory from a database, and by verifying the biometrics data against biometrics data acquired from a sensor for biometrics data, a biometrics authentication system with fast response has been constructed. This is called 1:1 authentication. However, in the case of 1:1 authentication, the ID numbers of users must each be unique, and in system with a large number of users the ID numbers have numerous digits, and are difficult to remember. Conversely, if the number of digits is made small to facilitate memorization, there is the possibility of overlapping of registrant numbers, and the possibility of N:1 authentication is increased.
In an example of a system requiring a small number N, such as a system to regulate entry into and egress from apartment rooms, biometrics authentication is performed after input of the room number. In this case, a plurality of persons are family members living in the same room, and so it is possible to provide a function enabling registration of a plurality of persons with a single ID number. However, because a unique number cannot be assigned to each registrant, biometrics authentication is possible, but it is difficult to access individual information or other information through this authentication. For example, if biometrics authentication is to be used in a rental system, it would be difficult to manage individual information such as the circumstances of rentals to each individual, the history of past rentals, and similar.
This problem has impeded the spread of biometrics authentication equipment and has been one reason for reduced efficiency for users; and further innovations to enable effective utilization of biometrics authentication in such environments has been deemed necessary.